Militants set fire to NATO tankers in Pakistan

KARACHI, (Reuters) – Suspected militants in Pakistan  set fire to three dozen tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops  in Afghanistan yesterday, officials said, a day after three  soldiers were killed in a cross-border NATO air strike.

Angered by repeated incursions by NATO helicopters over the  past week, Pakistan has blocked a supply route for coalition  troops in Afghanistan.  Pakistan is a crucial ally for the United States in its  efforts to stabilise Afghanistan, but analysts say border  incursions and disruptions in NATO supplies underline growing  tensions in the relationship.

A senior Pakistani intelligence official said the border  incursions could lead to a “total snapping of relations”.

Senior local officials blamed “extremists” for the attack  on the tankers in the southern town of Shikarpur. About 12  people, their faces covered, opened fire with small arms into  the air to scare away the drivers and then set fire to 35  tankers.

“Some of them have been completely destroyed and others  partially. But there is no loss of human life,” Shikarpur  police chief Abdul Hameed Khoso told Reuters.

In a separate incident, two unidentified men fired on a  NATO tanker travelling through a town in Pakistan’s  southwestern Baluchistan province towards Afghanistan. Two  people burned to death after the vehicle caught fire, security  officials said.

Police arrested 10 people after the earlier attack,  including five netted from a raid on an Islamic seminary, or  madrasa.

The tankers were parked at a filling station on their way  to Afghanistan from Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi.
On Thursday, three Pakistani soldiers were killed and three  wounded in two cross-border incursions by NATO forces chasing  militants in Pakistan’s northwestern Kurram region.

It was the third cross-border incident in a week, the  Pakistan military said. NATO said the helicopters briefly  crossed into Pakistan airspace after coming under fire from  people there.